Health & Safety

COVID-19 - Information for Individuals and Businesses

Visit the NZ government COVID-19 website

General information for the public from the Ministry of Health.

Government information for businesses is available on the business.govt.nz site.

Health and Safety Act 2016

S+SNZ advocates best practice for health and safety and is committed to ensuring members are kept abreast of the new Health and Safety reform.

The Act is wide-ranging with the aim of addressing New Zealand’s poor health and safety record. It will have wide-reaching implications and requirements for not only individuals and employees but also for businesses both large and small. Individual obligations and liabilities are one of the new features of the legislation that everyone needs to be aware of.

The key intents of the Act are to ensure employers provide and maintain a workplace that is safe and without risk to health and that workers care for themselves and other people in the workplace as well as observing and respecting all safety rules, directions and requirements relating to health and safety.

Key points to be aware of:

  • Change in terms: The new Act changes the terms currently used for employers and employees and expands the definition of an officer
  • Definition of employee is expanded: An employee includes permanent employees; contractors; temporary workers; sub-contractors; labour-hire workers; students gaining work experience and apprentices.
  • You are individually liable: Individual people now have a responsibility for their health and safety and personal liability. This differs from previously where businesses carried the liability.
  • Specific responsibilities: There are responsibilities under the Act specific to workers, Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU) (ie an employer) and Officers (ie a person who makes or participates in making decisions that affect the whole or a substantial part of the business of the organization or who has the capacity to significantly affect the organisation’s financial standing).
  • Right to information: Workers have a right to health and safety information, training, and systems provided by PCBUs.
  • You can refuse to do work : The Act gives Workers the right to refuse to do work they think is likely to seriously harm them.

Resources

Five Ways to Well being Toolkit

The Five Ways to Wellbeing at Work Toolkit is a stepped guide to improving mental wellness in your workplace. It includes fact sheets, tips, tools and templates to make it easy for you to support your teams to build the Five Ways into their daily lives. The toolkit can be downloaded as one document or in sections.

Mental wellbeing is one of the most valuable business assets. Workplaces that prioritise mental health have better engagement, reduced absenteeism and higher productivity, while people have improved wellbeing, greater morale and higher job satisfaction.

NZ Human Rights Commission

Worksafe New Zealand

Following an Earthquake

Download the Worksafe guides from Attachments below.

General Information

Attachments